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NY Times, Feb. 27, 2020
Tribal Nation Condemns ‘Desecration’ to Build Border Wall
By Simon Romero
LUKEVILLE, Ariz. — Cut down a saguaro cactus in Arizona and you can face
years in prison. But over the past several weeks, work crews have been
destroying dozens of the protected cactuses, which can live for 200
years, to build a new wall on the southwestern border.
The remains of chopped-up saguaros are now visible along a swath of the
Sonoran Desert in southern Arizona, part of what Native American leaders
warn is a range of environmental and archaeological threats posed by the
Trump administration’s scramble to build the wall.
Work along the border, according to tribal leaders of the Tohono O’odham
Nation who live on both sides of the border, is blasting ancient burial
sites and siphoning an aquifer that feeds a desert oasis where human
beings have slaked their thirst for 16,000 years.
The outcry by tribal citizens reflects the latest phase in the
quarreling over the border wall, after federal courts allowed the Trump
administration to speed construction by waiving dozens of laws,
including measures protecting endangered species and Native American
burial sites. Federal officials have cited President Trump’s national
emergency declaration in 2019, aimed at curbing unauthorized
immigration, as justification for the waivers.
Dynamite blasts are now echoing throughout lands assigned the highest
degree of permanent protection by Congress as workers lay the foundation
for the wall. To mix concrete, crews are drawing water from a spring
near where ancient bone fragments were unearthed last year.
The work is occurring at sites inside the Organ Pipe Cactus National
Monument, which President Franklin D. Roosevelt established by
proclamation in 1937. The area has been designated by UNESCO, the United
Nations cultural organization, as an internationally protected biosphere
reserve.
“To state it clearly, we are enduring crimes against humanity,” said
Verlon M. José, the governor of the Tohono O’odham in northern Mexico
and a former vice chairman of the tribal nation on the American side of
the border.
“Tell me where your grandparents are buried and let me dynamite their
graves,” said Mr. José, emphasizing how visceral an issue the blasting
has become among O’odham-speaking peoples. “This wall is already putting
a scar across our heart.”
The Border Patrol, which is overseeing the wall construction within the
national monument, is hitting back at such assessments. John Mennell, a
Border Patrol spokesman, disputed the claims by O’odham leaders and said
that “no biological, cultural or historical sites were identified within
the project area.”
In a statement, Mr. Mennell added that the agency has “a history of
voluntary compliance where it is necessary to minimize impacts,” and
that workers were destroying only cactuses “determined not to be in a
healthy enough state to be relocated.”
At a congressional hearing about these activities on Wednesday,
Representative Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona, compared the blasting
at sites held to be sacred by Native Americans to the war crime of
destroying sacred cultural sites during international conflicts.
He also accused federal authorities of “gaslighting” by contending that
the construction work was aimed at preserving lands near the border. The
government has suggested that building a wall would prevent migrants
from trampling over the desert in vehicles and on foot.
The White House and Department of Homeland Security did not send
representatives to the hearing. On the same day as the hearing, the
Border Patrol and Army Corps of Engineers invited reporters to view a
controlled detonation during border wall construction.
After grievances by O’odham citizens intensified in recent months,
Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, a Democrat representing southern
Arizona, homed in on the use of explosives at an area of the monument
that many O’odham consider a sacred Indigenous site.
Citing O’odham leaders, Mr. Grijalva said in a video posted on Twitter
that the site, known as Memorial Hill, “is the resting place primarily
for Apache warriors that had been involved in battle with the O’odham,
and then the O’odham people in a respectful way laid them to rest on
Monument Hill.”
Objections to the border wall are now multiplying from the some 28,000
enrolled members of Tohono O’odham (pronounced To-HO-no AW-tham). Many
live in the tribal nation’s reservation in Arizona, which is near Organ
Pipe, while about 2,000 others live in an adjacent area of northern Mexico.
Before the American conquest of Arizona in the 1840s, the O’odham
homeland encompassed Organ Pipe as well as much of southern Arizona. The
border sliced through these lands first as a result of the
Mexican-American War, and then the Gadsden Purchase in 1854.
Now the stretch of border where work crews are blasting rock and
building the wall is creating a gash through the middle of this revered
stretch of desert. On a recent day in February, it was possible to see
the uprooted remains of an organ pipe cactus, the protected and rare
species that resembles a pipe organ.
The Border Patrol said workers had relocated hundreds of cactuses within
the park, but tribal leaders and environmental activists have documented
multiple examples of uprooted cactuses left to decay under the desert sun.
Agents from the Fish and Wildlife Agency detained Coromoto Ureña, a
Venezuelan migrant, and her 4-year-old granddaughter, Maria José, in the
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
Federal courts allowed the Trump administration to speed construction of
the border wall by waiving dozens of laws, including measures protecting
endangered species and Native American burial sites.
Serving as testament to the rise and fall of nations in the borderlands,
some of the cactuses destroyed by work crews for the Nebraska
construction giant Kiewit were alive before the international border
even existed in this part of the Sonoran Desert.
The national monument sits at the heart of an ancient Indigenous
territory known during colonial times as the Papaguería, according to
the Organ Pipe monument’s administrative history, with petroglyphs and
rock art scattered throughout the site.
In addition to providing the name of the tribal nation, the word
“O’odham” roughly means both “saguaro” and “person,” reflecting how
O’odham peoples relied on the cactuses as a fruit, cooked over mesquite
or fermented into ceremonial wine.
“All of the desecration to build this wall constitutes a very personal
attack on us,” said Amber Ortega, 33, an O’odham student who lives near
the monument. “Why have laws when there is no accountability for these
abuses?”
To advance the border wall project, the Trump administration has used a
little-known section of the Real ID Act that allows the Department of
Homeland Security to waive compliance with federal law to expedite
construction of barriers along the border.
Among the laws being waived is the Endangered Species Act. Laiken
Jordahl, a former National Park Service employee who surveyed the
wildlife of Organ Pipe, said the at-risk animals in the park include the
lesser long-nosed bat and the Sonoran pronghorn, one of the most
critically endangered wildlife species in the United States.
“This project will change the evolutionary history of this landscape,
impacting species migrations, seed dispersal, the flow of water,” said
Mr. Jordahl, who now works for the Center for Biological Diversity, an
organization focused on saving imperiled species. “It’s painfully
obvious that we’re destroying what this place was established to
protect,” he said.
The push to build the wall stands in contrast to previous infrastructure
projects on the border.
During construction of a section of border wall in 2008, the Bush
administration trucked in water for construction use instead of
extracting water from the aquifer feeding the Quitobaquito spring.
Authorities were hoping to preserve the Quitobaquito oasis, where
O’odham people had lived for generations. Among them was a family that
had remained at the site for two decades after the monument was created,
until the National Park Service forced them to leave, according to Jared
Orsi, a historian at Colorado State University.
Last year, bone fragments found near the spring were determined to be
from the Classic Hohokam Period, which lasted from A.D. 300 to 1,500.
The National Park Service said it planned to repatriate the fragments to
the Tohono O’odham Nation.
Now workers at the site are pumping water from the aquifer beneath
Quitobaquito to mix cement and to water down dirt roads around
construction sites. That could endanger not just the spring’s existence
but species in its waters such as the Quitobaquito pupfish and Sonoyta
mud turtle, according to the National Park Service.
Mr. Mennell, the Border Patrol spokesman, said park officials were
monitoring the spring to “identify any significant changes in water
levels.” He said no groundwater would be used within five miles of
Quitobaquito.
“People would be unhinged if this were happening someplace else,” said
Vana Lewis, 35, a Tohono O’odham teacher. “This fits into a pattern of
trampling over our rights on land that was taken from us and was ours
since time immemorial.”
Around the work sites that are strewn with felled cactuses, the
occasional tourist shows up to snap pictures of the wall going up. Signs
provide warnings about nearby blasting. Border Patrol agents still
search for migrants crossing into the wilderness.
On a recent day, Border Patrol agents and employees from the National
Park Service picked up a Venezuelan, Coromoto Ureña, who had crossed
with her 4-year-old granddaughter, María José, at a remote spot near
Quitobaquito.
“Our only choice was to come this way,” said Ms. Ureña, 59, a resident
of San Cristóbal, Venezuela, clasping the hand of her granddaughter
while they were being detained. Ms. Ureña said they were hoping to
reunite in the United States with her son, who lives in Denver.
O’odham leaders have been grasping for ways of stymieing the project.
Ned Norris Jr., the chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation, requested
this month that the Defense Department halt diversion of an estimated
$3.8 billion in military funds the administration hopes to use to pay
for the wall.
As the blasting goes on, anger is building around the country from some
members of Congress and their constituents. Tammy Gitter, a yoga
instructor from Los Angeles, drove to Organ Pipe to witness what she
regarded as a disastrous event.
“I didn’t go to New York for 9/11 or New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina,
so I felt I had to come here,” said Ms. Gitter, 45.
“This tragedy is being carried out in our name,” said Ms. Gitter, tears
starting to swell in her eyes as she gazed at Quitobaquito’s waters.
“The whole thing just enrages me.”
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